


Something Strong and Sweet With A Little Kick to It

by underworlds



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Anal Sex, Bottom Axel (Kingdom Hearts), Dom Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Fist Fights, M/M, Oral Sex, Piercings, Possessive Behavior, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Seventh Heaven (Compilation of FFVII), Top Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:02:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27665117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/underworlds/pseuds/underworlds
Summary: A night out at the bar ends with more bodily fluids and broken bones than it began. If you asked Roxas why, he’d simply shrug and say “bitches who talk shit get hit.”Axel agrees. Enthusiastically.
Relationships: Axel/Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Cloud/Leon (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé/Xion (Kingdom Hearts), Tifa Lockhart/Reno
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	Something Strong and Sweet With A Little Kick to It

Axel strode out of the mens washroom to tune of a jaunty 80’s hit playing from the jukebox in the corner, if one could even dignify that grimy state of affairs with an association to the word ‘wash’. Seventh Heaven was known for its stiff drinks and its attractive, voluptuous proprietor, not for being the pinnacle of cleanliness and class. That had much more to do with the hygiene and appalling antics of its patrons than for lack of trying on Tifa’s part.

However, it wasn’t as though Axel hadn’t spent alarmingly long portions of his life in this bar, as a rebellious minor with a fake ID and then later as an employee. He’d seen the gamut of disgusting things go in and out of that bathroom over the years, but couldn’t be a hypocrite. He’d gotten up to his fair share of mischief in that narrow den of filth, was well acquainted with the structural features below and above standard eye level. There was even a particularly crude carving in the wall under the sink that was his own years-old handiwork.

It was a Thursday night, a crowd rolling through the area on an arbitrary crawl to Wall Market, the bar busier than what was typical for this time of night. It took a minute for the redhead to get the opportunity to signal Tifa for another round as he approached the bar. She slid an amber bottle down half the length of the worn wood to another gentleman and topped off a round of shots in the corner to the foursome of drunk, rowdy young blitzball players.

If Axel was more selfless he’d probably offer to jump behind the taps and help her out with the flow of drinkers, but he was already a few in and _really_ wasn’t looking to work on his night off from both jobs. That sounded boring and honestly the longer the men got to watch Tifa flit around making drinks the more they’d probably tip than if he joined in. Tifa and he made out like bandits when it came to holiday bartending, where all manner of grunt, gremlin, and great aunt came out of the woodwork and flocked to the bar as some mildly disconcerting tradition.

Instead, Axel scrolled through the messages on his phone, responding to Xion’s to update her on their location from the last stop where she departed to pick up her girlfriend from the train, sending a suggestive emoji in response to Sora’s latest text in the group thread, and answering Larxene’s insult with a remark of ‘love you too’. She was undoubtedly in for a busy, frustrating night at Wall Market with her business associate Madam M. There would be happy men heading home with light wallets. He looked up when Tifa deposited two bottles of his preferred brand in front of him on the well worn, cherry oak bar.

“Lively for a Thursday, huh?”

Tifa chuckled, shaking a silver canister to mix a martini, the impressive muscles in her arms flexing with the motion, “I won’t say no.”

Axel playfully pointed at her, grinning as he snagged the neck of both bottles with his free hand. “You better watch which redhead you say that to, Tif.”

The bartender rolled her warm, carmine eyes with an amused huff, turning on her heel to whisk the shaken contents to the excited customer at the far end, dark hair fluttering after her like a curtain.

“I’ve been telling Reno ‘no’ for years,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Someone has to!”

Axel laughed and tucked his phone into the pocket of his tight, torn, jeans with his free hand. Tifa and Reno, Axel’s hopeless older brother, had been sort of an on-again-off-again/will they won’t they...thing... since before Axel’s voice changed. There were more than a couple nights when teenage Axel, who’d just been trying to heat up a frozen burrito in the faulty microwave, encountered an upset Tifa coming into their wasteland of a kitchen on her way out the door after a tryst.

They’d ended up talking throughout the process of Axel desperately and repeatedly trying to defrost the persistent frozen innards of his meal and return to his equally sparse room, a once irritating entrapment to Axel that became a regular, cathartic occurrence for the both of them. Reno was, as he’d told her many times in no uncertain terms, a stubborn, emotionally stunted, idiot. This was a factor that contributed to the whole flippy-floppy nature of their entanglement as well as long years of hostility in the brothers’ own relationship.

Said idiot was likely to show his tattooed face at some point after his shift, but Axel was more than content to spend his absence in Roxas’s company. He’d left his boyfriend out back on the pitiful excuse of a ‘patio’ before his trip to the bathroom. Roxas had spent all day trying to get quality shots for a photography project, utilizing the sunset hours for skateboard shots of Hayner and himself. By the time Axel had met up with him, the blonde had more than a few scrapes, a headache, and several half-hazardly bandaged cuts for all his effort, which Axel absolutely didn’t fuss over. Roxas convinced him that gin would be the best medicine.

Axel exchanged greetings with a few familiar faces, noticed Cloud and Leon by one of the dart boards in the middle of a close 501 match and knew from past experiences it was better to let them finish the game before interrupting with greetings. He didn’t need both halves of the couple pissed at him, that was basically suicide. It was only when he strode down the hallway that led to the back alley patio, his heavy combat boots thudding against the tiles, that Axel’s hearing perked to the sound a commotion. There was a scuffing sound before the distinctive crunching of a fist colliding with bone. It was immediately followed by a sharp shout of pain, and then, finally, the clatter of a metal chair hitting the concrete. Driven by a single minded focus that screamed crystal clear and urgent as any reptile hindbrain function

_Roxas_

Axel bolted down the remaining hallway in a single stride to shove open the door. His heart hammered and blood sang in an admittedly somewhat frightening way he’d come to understand only occurred when Roxas was in trouble or hurt. _Red seeing red_ , Xigbar once remarked about it, after one spectacle during which Axel had cracked a bottle over a man’s face who had lingered in the dark behind the washroom door to accost the next entrant, who just happened to be Roxas. He had no remorse when the glass shattered over the man made face, and would tell you to this day that he definitely didn’t grow any.

The predator had been bodily hurled out into the street by Barrett before Axel could follow through with another, heavier, bottle, one capable of bludgeoning rather than shattering. Xigbar unhelpfully crowed with laughter at his usual chair throughout the whole altercation. Roxas had ended up blowing Axel out on the very patio in an equal effort to calm his wild dog of a boyfriend down, as well as satiate the arousal that seeing Axel murderous and protective like that evoked in him. As if he could suck the murderous rage out of the redhead through his dick. Roxas was more than confident he succeeded in that pursuit.

This time, Axel quickly thought to himself in the milliseconds, strategically if it came to fight instead of flight, he was already armed with two bottles for whatever faced him. Slamming open the partially open door, he stepped over the threshold and swept his gaze over the scene. He noted the image of one young man on the ground clutching his face while another two hovered over him, before finding his primary focus - the fluorescent lit pale gold of Roxas’s hair at the center of the space, across from the cursing man.

Roxas’s expression was thunderous, his almost cherubic face contorted into a derisive snarl, the red road rash on his chin from skateboarding only adding to the image of an avenging angel in battle. It was, a little concernedly, not the blonde’s usual style. Roxas was typically a cool, deliberately bottled storm. Whatever had gone on out here that resulted in Roxas being pushed to this point and the state of the cursing man on the ground’s bloody face and obviously broken nose, it wasn’t good. From the way Roxas’s fists were clenched and his chest was heaving, the fight may also not be over quite yet.

Axel deposited the beer bottles within reach on a table and wrapped his arms around the younger’s waist, restraining him, but also reaffirming to himself that Roxas was unhurt with the physical contact.

“What happened, babe?” He cooed into Roxas’s heavily pierced ear. “You okay? What’s got you doing, I gotta say, a killer imitation of Cujo?”

“Let me go, Axel,” Roxas growled, struggling against the elder’s firm hold, glaring out of the corner of his maelstrom blue eye.

“What?” Axel merely tightened his grip. “You’re not done?”

“No!” the blonde replied impetuously, eye narrowed on his unsupportive wrangler.

Axel chuckled, allowing one hand to nudge the unblemished portion of his boyfriend’s raw chin from his cross-body hold towards the sight of the groaning sad sack on the dirty, cigarette butt laden floor.

“Sweetheart, look at him,” he coaxed. “You fucked him up real good already. You do that all in one punch? It’s impressive.”

“Let go!” Roxas hissed, re-doubling his efforts, drawing the cautious glances of the man’s friends from where they were attending to him.

Axel widened his stance to plant his weight between his steel toed boots, knees bent to anticipate Roxas’s ornery, defiant attempts at escape. He could feel his lover’s nails dig into the denim of his jacket’s arms, trying to get the leverage to wrest an elbow between them. Axel glanced at Roxas’s knuckles in the artificial light, seeing the barely scabbed mounds from the earlier boarding torn and now bleeding anew from the impact of the punch.

“Rox,” he tried again, voice low and smooth. “Is whatever this human tampon did worth a manslaughter charge? I doubt it. Isn’t that what you said to me a few months back when I got all murder-y?”

“He called you a fucking faggot whore!” Roxas shouted, nearly breaking through Axel’s grip in his desperation to inflict more damage.

 _Oh_. That had Axel’s thin scarlet brows rising in surprise. He wasn’t expecting that. It had been a few years since Axel retired from his own stint in sex work. People had a way of talking, rumors had a way of sticking like cigarette tar. Despite his pretty decorated reputation that included his own long, and continuing history of personal shenanigans as a described deviant, that possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind as the impetus for Roxas’s fury. That didn’t even rank in the top 10 on his developing list of things that could have pissed Roxas off.

“Huh.” he wondered aloud, glancing over the crown of Roxas‘s blonde head to call over to the groaning figure, who now that he was really paying attention, he recognized as one of the blitzball players from inside. “What, like in general or are you an unsatisfied customer or something? There’s better ways to leave a negative review, ya know?”

The man’s companions, two dopey-faced men with questionable facial hair, that had spent most of the evening smoking out back, looked blankly between their injured companion and Axel, finally connecting the dots and going red in the face at the implication. Maintaining his grip on his pipebomb of a boyfriend, Axel’s expression slid into a dirty, pointed smile when he continued to address the fallen athlete.

“You look a lil young tho and I‘ve abstained from the nasty habit of blowing repressed bigots for a while now,” he hummed, scanning what he could see of the man’s round face beneath the blood and his obscuring and equally bloody hand. Axel’s sour apple eyes sparkled with relish at his own effective methods of rendering the three oh so uncomfortable. “Maybe I took your daddy ‘round the world? Is that it? Got on my knees and showed him such a good time that he and the missus are having irreconcilable differences? This you acting out, baby boy?”

“Axel!” Roxas snapped, twisting and bucking.

“S’okay, Rox.” Axel smiled, sharp as a switchblade at the physical reactions of discomfort from the three, his own darker impulses beginning to awaken. “If this blitz _baller_ wants to air a grievance of my services, retired as I may be, I’m all ears. What do you think, boys? Wanna talk technique?”

“He’s really drunk,” the taller one tried once he was addressed directly.

The stout, darker haired one had produced a wad of napkins from one of the other tables and pressed it into the glaring athlete’s bloody hand, avoiding eye contact.

“Yeah, he didn’t mean anything by it, man.”

“Bullshit!” Roxas barked, about to start struggling with renewed effort.

Axel internally calculated the most effective way to cool Roxas down and end this without further bloodshed, a thought that would be completely at odds with his younger self’s mentality. Even with one of them already injured, Roxas’s nearly celestial wrath, and Axel’s own scrappy penchant for fighting as dirty as he needed to, three against two weren’t the greatest odds.

He might take on something reckless like this if it were just himself out here, had in the past in fact, but not with the chance Roxas could get hurt. He really wasn’t in the mood for this altercation to escalate to the point he actually would have to pull out his knife, even if he was prepared to if it came down to it, would likely fall back into the muscle memory. This was supposed to be a night off, he lamented as the door abruptly opened again.

“Everything alright out here?” Leon asked mildly. He may have merely asked a question and calmly stepped on to the patio, but his presence was imposing enough to visibly unsettle the trio in an entirely different way. It didn’t help when Cloud followed in his wake, his own gaze assessing the scene, lingering on where Roxas glowered in Axel’s grip before focusing equally as intimidatingly as his partner on the three other men. The two made the patio feel suddenly so much smaller.

Axel laughed, greedily amused by this turn of events. It looked like blood might not be the only bodily fluid the bigot found himself covered in tonight, from the way he was starting to panic and tremble, glancing between Leon and Cloud like a frightened rabbit.

“We’re all good, Leon.” Axel said. “Roxas here was just reminding these three gentlemen to respect your local sex worker.”

Leon’s brow arched in confusion before furrowing. He might not quite understand whatever Axel was saying, but context clues of the bare bones of the situation weren’t difficult to come by. The overhead lighting put the scar across his ruggedly handsome face into greater view as he stared down his nose at the bleeding young man.

“That so?”

“Looks like it took some repetition for the lesson to sink in,” Cloud remarked, slowly taking another step towards the three. The man’s attendees were looking like they were going to bail on him more every second, with every step, eyes flitting toward the alley exit.

“Well you know,” Axel sighed, feeling Roxas start to settle against him with the appearance of their champions. It didn’t suffocate the fire, but at least redirected it. “Some people have thick Puritan skulls, some people have inadequacy issues when it comes to their cock, some don’t understand sexuality 101 or that sex work is work, and some are unlucky enough to have ‘em all.”

“How unfortunate,” Cloud said dryly.

Leon crossed his beefy arms over his chest, the veins in his muscular forearms visible even under the overhead light, “One would hope that with all that, they’d at least have the common sense and self preservation to know when it’s time to go.”

“One would hope,” Axel sighed mournfully, shuttling Roxas in the direction of the door. “Would you guys make sure he appreciates that? Blood is a bitch to get out of concrete and I’d hate Tifa to have to go to even more trouble if it doesn’t manage to sink in.”

“Not a problem,” Leon nodded while Cloud stood silently but threateningly close beside the table where the other men were scrambling for their jackets.

“Thanks! Love you!” Axel crowed back to the avengers, shoving Roxas ahead of him through the doorway.

They were barely inside the bar, ducking into the back room that led to the upstairs portion of the building, scrambling up the set of stairs and on to the landing, when they finally crashed together against the wall. Axel, back pinned flat to the gaudy wallpaper where he was held, looked down at Roxas, taking in the heaving of his chest, the firm grip he had at Axel’s shoulder and collar, which was absolutely getting dirtied with dried blood, before settling on his stormy face and feeling his own dick pulse at the sight.

“You’re _so_ fucking gorgeous when you’re mad,” Axel purred, licking his lips and savoring how the blonde’s cold fire gaze dropped to follow the movement of the silver stud along the pink, wet, swell.

When Roxas simultaneously yanked his head down by the collar and surged upward to kiss him, growling through his teeth, it was as aggressive and vicious as the punch that had broken the nose of the asshole outside. It was the kind of kiss that wordlessly declared ownership, that plainly reiterated that he could and fully intended to do whatever he wanted with Axel right now, and Axel would happily let him.

The older man moaned into the kiss at such a dark promise, excitement blooming, and let himself be moved and shoved whichever way Roxas’s bloody hands and ravenous mouth directed. In the meantime, Axel hooked his index fingers in the belt loops of Roxas’s jeans, pulling him flush against the line of his taller body and letting him feel just how his blood rushed and pooled at the thought of Roxas in danger, at the sight of him protective and possessive.

“I suppose I should thank you for defending my honor,” Axel crooned into the space between their lips as he walked backwards, feeling Roxas’s hand briefly depart from where it was groping his ass to fumble with a doorknob. “Show some appreciation to my knight in shining Converse.”

They stumbled into the ramshackle space that served as an office, passing Roxas’s previously stored camera bag. Axel made quick work of the papers spread across the wooden table, shoving them to the floor while Roxas gave his taller lover’s denim jacket the same treatment. Axel had to snicker when he suddenly found himself forced into the same position the papers had previously been in, looking up at Roxas who was unbuttoning his dark jeans. Axel let out another appreciative sound when the blonde pulled the jeans and his boxers down just far enough to free his equally angry cock.

“Get on your knees then.”

Axel slid off the table in a fluid movement with no further need for guidance, papers rustling beneath his knees where he settled, entirely focused on where Roxas was jacking his exposed dick only inches in front of him. The head was flushed and leaking invitingly, sending desire rolling over the redhead in a consuming wave, heart pounding from the adrenaline. He wrapped slender, pale fingers around its girth and brought his eager lips to meet the tip. There were times for teasing, for running his studded tongue down the length, over each vein, worshipping, until Roxas was vibrating out of his skin and snapping at him to get on with it. But this wasn’t one of those times, not when they were both so keyed up.

Axel suckled and slurped the first few inches of Roxas’s cock with enthusiasm, moaning around the hot length and coaxing it to full hardness, before taking it deep into his throat and holding it there. The sound of soft, involuntary shock and pleasure that Roxas emitted was one of Axel’s personal favorites in the world and he would do almost anything to hear it on a loop. He felt Roxas’s fingers slide into his scarlet hair, grasp the roots at the back of his skull. When Axel eventually pulled off for air, a long string of saliva connected his already swollen lips to the glistening crown. After taking a few brief lungfuls, he obediently followed the forceful motion of Roxas’s hand against his head back down, encouraging the blonde to use his mouth with a pleased hum.

Roxas growled and began thrusting into his pliant lover’s wet hole without restraint, his free hand braced on the table. Axel liked it rough like this, with Roxas’s balls rhythmically hitting his chin, not letting up to give him a break, the aggressive treatment making drool begin to pool around Roxas’s shaft at the corners of his mouth and trickle down his chin as he was used. Already his absinthe eyes were blown with pleasure and shimmering wet where they stared up at his hissing lover. Roxas still looked gorgeously angry, his jaw set and nostrils flaring with exertion, his lips barely parted and dark Pacific blue eyes narrowed hungrily on the filthy image between his legs. Axel put extra effort into showing his gratitude, swirling his tongue, applying harsh suction and taking Roxas fully into his throat again until Roxas snarled.

“You gonna fuck me with this?” Axel asked thickly, nuzzling his face against the base of Roxas’s wet shaft when he pulled off again, swallowing his mouthful of precum.

“No lube,” Roxas grunted, a little bit more petulantly than he’d like to admit, and twitched when Axel flicked his pierced tongue along the slit. They were often well prepared for impromptu trysts, much to their friends’ eye-rolling chagrin, but Roxas hadn’t carried any with him today.

“I wouldn’t be too hasty,” Axel slowly said with a smug, taunting lilt, taking a beat to lick the forming pearl of precum at Roxas’s tip before continuing. “Figured you wouldn’t do yourself the supreme disservice of having lube explode in your pocket from wiping out on your board, Tony Hawk. And I may not have been a Boy Scout, but…”

“Get up here,” Roxas instructed immediately, connecting the dots. “Before I rethink punishing you for stopping me from kicking his ass out there.”

Axel grinned and pressed a final kiss to the head of his boyfriend’s cock, pushing himself to his feet only to find himself spun around and knocked down onto his elbows atop the table once more. He felt Roxas remove the wallet from the pocket of his tight black jeans to attain the sample packet of lube and condom he’d tucked in there and arched his back in anticipation.

“You know I’m a sucker for punishment, Rox,” Axel purred, laughing when Roxas yanked his jeans down his narrow hips for him and delivered a smack to his bared ass.

“You’ve made the sucker part clear,” Roxas remarked in a deadpan, tearing open the packet with his teeth.

“Do what you love, isn’t that what they say?”

Roxas made quick work of prepping him, trusting Axel enough to not be a hero and say if he needed more fancy fingerwork, before aligning and thrusting in with an impatient surge of ferocious energy, like a perfect suckepunch. And he didn’t hesitate. Axel’s elbows gave at the abrupt force and he clutched at the far edge of the table, breath forced out of his lungs in time with each of Roxas’s unrelenting, aggressive thrusts. Pleasure and pain lanced up his body in a delicious song, plucking his firing nerves in the most addictive way.

He didn’t even bother trying to stifle his loud, enthusiastic sounds of enjoyment from anyone who may be passing by the staircase or hearing the steady thump of the furniture overhead. Their melody bounced off the walls, joined by the rhythmic creaking of the table and quiet crunching of papers beneath Roxas’s sneakers.

“Such a slut.” Roxas bit out gruffly, “Seeing me pissed off turned you on this fucking much?”

“Yeah, your slut,” the elder groaned affirmatively, one cheek pressed to the wooden surface, canting his hips backwards eagerly. “All yours, baby.”

Axel had almost gotten used to the furious rhythm that had been set, seconds starting to blur into an incalculable gauzy pleasure, when he gasped at Roxas suddenly hauling him back up on to his elbows by a hand woven back into his messy red hair. He could feel the breath from Roxas’s panting mouth at his shoulder where he’d closed as much of the gap as he could from this angle, feel the trembling in his forearms where the tendons were drawn tight as bowstrings.

“That’s right,” Roxas said with the same current of heat as the bloodthirsty snarls from outside. “You think I’m gonna let some meathead fuck with me? Run his mouth? Fuck with what’s mine?”

Axel shuddered at the heavenly burst of electricity those words, that possessive tone, sent through him. “No, c-course not,” he breathed in between jostles with a crooked smile.

“I should have stomped on his Neanderthal face, should have ripped out his tongue and shoved it up his ass.” the blonde growled with a harsh, pointed succession of thrusts that made Axel’s head spin. “God, Axel, I wanted to fuck your mouth out there in front of them, you couldn’t even resist screwing with them could you? Fucking hypocrite.”

Axel rocked backwards, smile erupting into a full bright grin, nearly mad with it. “Guilty.”

Roxas’s hand released his grip on the red locks to resume its place at Axel’s waist, yanking him backwards further on to his hard cock. Even when he had struggled against Axel’s intervention in the fight, he saw when that dangerous look appeared on Axel’s face. It was a look that sent blood rushing to his dick, it did it every single time.

“Like you wouldn’t have done the same,” Roxas accused, his blue gaze focused on the beautiful image Axel made. It was almost like kindling for his lingering rage. The sharp angles of his shoulders, like white blades, the hourglass of his torso marked with ink and scar tissue, so much pale earth he could scorch with righteous, holy fire. His. 

“I woulda probably got a few more h-hits in,” Axel taunted, losing the ability to grin his due victory once Roxas ground viciously into him in reply.

The blonde had swept over him like a shadow, his bloody, sun kissed fingers grasping the edge of the table beside Axel’s own milky white hands, the sudden leverage devastating and deep in a way that Axel’s startled breath caught and hung in his throat like a gallow. Axel whimpered in primal delight at the dark voice at his ear, the firm grip around his cock, his synapses firing and sensations crossing frenetically.

_“There wouldn’t be anything left for you but the bloodstains.”_

“Roxas, fuck!” Axel shouted as he came, his release spurting on to the floor beneath the table in a messy arc. Roxas chased his own orgasm, hauling Axel’s clenching body back on to his dick, hissing at the rhythmic milking of Axel’s fluttering hole around him.

He looked down at Axel again through the urgent haze, panting and shivering in a heap on the table, beautiful and subdued, and felt himself launched into the sweet, sharp crest of pleasure and bit down on the back of Axel’s neck as he rode it out. He could hear Axel moaning beneath him as he shot into the condom with juddering bucks of his hips and felt the tension that had seized his body since the blitzball player’s comments finally ebb away in time with his release.

They came down from the high after a long series of breaths, Roxas pressing a gentle kiss to the bite and then repeating it at the round of Axel’s tattooed shoulder. He lingered like that, letting Axel take most of his weight.

“Feel better?” the redhead asked, one side of his face still pressed to the wood surface.

“Uh-huh,” Roxas affirmed, wrapping a hand around the base of his softening dick to pull out. He preened a little at Axel’s mournful hiss.

“Glad to be of service.”

Roxas rolled his eyes, watching the lean form of his lover turn over on his back on the table to look up at him with a warm, sated expression. Strands of scarlet hair cling to his sweaty forehead and dangled over his sour apple green eyes. It hit him square in the chest, looking at his lazy smile, just how much he loved this man. He could say it took its breath away, but the sex was the more likely culprit.

“I know we’ve talked about it at length so just consider this checking in,” Axel began, leisurely taking one of Roxas’s hands in his own, minding the knuckles. “But ya know I really don’t give a shit what people say about me, babe. True or not. And I definitely don’t want you gettin’ hurt over it. Even if it ends in fan-fucking-tastic sex.”

Axel pointedly kissed beneath one of Roxas’s split and scabbing knuckles with a waggle of his eyebrows as if to say ‘exhibit A’.

“I know,” Roxas grumbled, the dying embers of fury flickering within him. “I just…”

“Don’t take very kindly to people trying to degrade those you care about?” the elder guessed. “Please, Rox, that’s one of the very first things I knew about you, even before your name. Need I remind you you almost threw hands in the high school parking lot with Larxene of all people?”

Roxas stooped over him with a quiet smile, ignoring the twinge in his back from their previous rigorous activity and met the ritualistic brush of Axel’s nose with his own. Neither of them had really been accustomed to this before each other, the softness after, had fumbled and fled in the early days, but now it was like clockwork.

“Fucking fuck!” Reno yelped upon entering the room, wrenching his head to the side as though the ark of the covenant had been opened before him.

“Hey, bro.” Axel waved lazily over Roxas’s shoulder.

“Don’t talk to me while you’ve got a dick in your ass!” Reno howled, covering his blue eyes with one hand.

“I already pulled out,” Roxas snickered, glancing over his shoulder to where Reno was blindly reaching door jamb with his free hand.

“I’m gonna go take shots.” Reno nodded to himself in the hall once he managed, as if confirming a rescue plan. “Lots of shots. So I forget the deeply traumatic shit I just saw.”

They heard the successive sound of Reno’s rapid retreating footfalls down the stairs and when he jumped the last three in his haste.

“He acts like it’s the first time he’s caught us,” Roxas chuckled, pushing himself back to his feet.

“Or like it will be the last.” Axel added as he stretched his arms over his head with a contented hum and a wicked smirk.

As the duo made their path down the stairs a few minutes later, clothes and bandaids reapplied, and back into the bustling bar, they were more than well aware of the many sets of eyes flickering in their direction, some with hesitant embarrassment, others with respect. Reno was still covering his own eyes with one hand and slamming back a shot with the other, acting like he was a man going through divorce or financial ruin instead of just being a drama queen. Even from a distance they could see him whine at Tifa for another round, at which she laughed indulgently but dispensed accordingly.

Xion’s leather jacket hung over the chair beside him, Axel spotting her mop of dark hair over by the dartboard with Leon, who was assessing her stance and nudging her elbow just so. Namine could be seen to the side, holding the sleeve of Cloud’s jacket where a seam had split. Axel made a note to ask if the shitstains from the patio wet themselves by the time the formidable twosome were finished, but was content to lean against the corner of the bar until he completely regained feeling in his coltish legs. Instead, he watched Roxas hop into the chair beside him and tug Axel’s arm around his shoulder, as if putting it back where it naturally belonged.

His hand, instinctively and as predictable as avian migration, shifted to rest at the back of Roxas’s neck and absently stroke at the sweat-damp golden strands. Roxas leaned into the touch with a sigh and Axel was satisfied to find no traces of his earlier fury lingering in his expression and posture. He brushed the pad of his thumb against the skin that mirrored the bitemark on his own nape, his lips quirking when Roxas made knowing eye contact with him by the third pass.

”Your service is shit, Ax. I’m still waiting on that beer.”


End file.
